As feedback specialists, we help businesses organisations with all sorts of feedback on-line off-line, direct and indirect, immediate and delayed.

(I bet you didn’t even know that there where so many variations!)

Now, most people are beginning to realise that feedback only has value when it is transparent, and includes both positive and negative; but there are many organisations out there, and even, hideously, feedback systems that are promoting the ability to filter feedback; i.e. you just publish the good feedback (this is a process we use to call in the good old days, publishing ‘testimonials’).

So, without me having to spell out how completely ridiculously daft this is to do this let me just ask you some questions;

How popular would Trip Advisor if it only had good reviews?

How reliable would customer reviews on Amazon be if they only published the good reviews?

How would EBay work if the customer could only publish a good review?

It’s ludicrous isn’t it? Yet, so many businesses are still on this mind set of ‘testimonials’ rather than feedback!

I don’t know how we can make this clearer; manipulating feedback in any way is like taking Aspirin for a broken leg.

Feedback instead needs to be dealt with systematically structurally, using both immediate and time lapsed systems, and joined together to make it easier for the customer to tell you whether you are good bad or indifferent.

The feedback needs to be published openly so that your consumers will trust you (remember; everyone can get things wrong, just not owning up is the problem!). And every type of feedback should generate a response that will build customer loyalty and referrals.

There are ways of doing this that are tried and tested and pay for themselves many times over. If you don’t know about these or have any questions you know where to get hold of us.

In today’s hyper connected, value savvy global marketplace, your customers are becoming ever more the key and demanding. They can talk about you behind your back to the world at the touch of a button and the speed of light.

To quote Jeff Bezos: ‘Your brand is what the customer says when you’re not in the room’

So are you listening?

Research shows, that the vast majority of businesses and organisations are either not listening at all, or listening ineffectively.

Not listening at all: the ostrich with its head in the sand syndrome. There are plenty of feedback systems to at least help you get started with listening, even if you just monitor twitter and put google alerts on your brands. If you are not currently listening, there must be a reason for this: either you are nervous and unsure what to do for the best, or you may be frightened as to how to react to feedback as and when it comes. In either case we at Investors in Feedback can help you move forward in a very cost effective and easy to manage way:

Beware, there are plenty of snake oil salesman out there who will try and take a large chunk of your money for systems that work ineffectually or in an incomplete way.

Listening ineffectually: we find that the vast majority of businesses who are gathering feedback, are using ineffectual systems, these are systems that have the following issues:

low response rates

no real understanding of what the customer means

lack of true information to help you learn and grow

perceived unfairness

lack of consumer confidence that their review will make any difference (so, instead, they don’t bother to fill in your reviews, and, instead just gossip about you to the world behind your back)

and, probably the biggest issue of all, inability for the customer to feed back to you in an easy and risk free way, while they are still a customer to you (i.e. Before they have left you or completed their transaction with you)

Many of the online feedback systems that are touted so widely at the moment have all these issues attached to them: one thing that they do help you with is ‘search engine optimisation’, through publishing your feedback openly and transparently (and this is something that should genuinely be encouraged in all circumstances).

If you wish to know more about all these issues and find out how to put feedback systems in place that would genuinely build your reputation, customer loyalty and referrals, then we are the worldwide leader in feedback audit and accreditation to help you achieve these aims.